Friday 4 August: Britain risks repeating past mistakes in the race for clean technology

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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578 thoughts on “Friday 4 August: Britain risks repeating past mistakes in the race for clean technology”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s short and simple

    Dork Of The Week
    Monica Lewinsky (on CNN’s Larry King Live discussing her miraculous Jenny Craig weight-loss): “I’ve learned not to put things in my mouth that are bad for me”

      2. Monica
        Reminds me of the story about Monica Lewinsky being questioned by a lawyer for Bill Clinton.
        Lawyer: “Ms Lewinsky, did you lie for your President?”
        Monica: “No Sir, I knelt”.

  4. Morning, all Y’all.
    Just been reading the Al Beeb .co.uk, and they seem to have adopted an appalling style where every sentence is it’s own paragraph. Where did that come from? Is it for the hard of remembering? It’s awfully disjointed. D Tel does it, too. ARGH!

    1. Visual impact.
      I do it sometimes, if the sentences are complicated and I want people to pay attention.

      Most people these days won’t read a short block of text. I blame smartphones…

    2. Visual impact. I do it sometimes, if the sentences are complicated and I want people to pay attention. Most people these days won’t read a short block of text. I blame smartphones.

    3. Morning, Paul, re getting to Newquay:

      There used to be a car ferry from Gothernberg (Goteborg) to Newcastle and it called at Christiansand en route.

      1. Gone, I’m afraid, as has Bergen & Stavanger – Newcastle.
        Some years ago we travelled on a truck ferry from Brevik – Immingham, but now they don’t take passengers. Closest car route is vis Hoek v Holland.
        All because its cheaper to fly.

        1. I think DFDS have no ferries now, just road transport.
          We used to enjoy mini-breaks on their ferries; literally crossing say, from Harwich to Esbjerg and back again.

    2. Go and have a listen to UKColumn News for Wednesday August 2nd. Vanessa Beeley dealt with this. Africa is turning away from the West. It is fed up with Western imperialist plundering of its resources while getting very little in return.

      1. I’ve been watching some African media. They have some fair points, but there is also a great deal of self-delusion.

        For example, they say things like “the West talks about aid to Africa, but in fact Africa has been giving aid to the West by supplying them with cheap commodities” (metals)

        This is a moot point. We all know that if not for Western enterprise and inventiveness, all the cobalt, uranium etc would be sitting in the ground and they wouldn’t have thought of any way to use it.
        The important issue here is not what the truth is, but how Africans perceive it.

        It is a very dangerous situation because we have countries with a lot of young people where the prevailing mood is that the West has exploited them and owes them great wealth. THAT is the mindset of all the young men entering our country. They feel morally entitled to take whatever they want.

        This appears to be tacitly encouraged by the lizard elite (possibly China?). All the BLM, critical race theory stuff is backing this sense of entitlement, and is going further, by telling stupid, impressionable youths (because the smart ones will see through it) that white people are evil and therefore you are allowed to steal from them or even kill them without consequences.

  9. Britain risks repeating past mistakes in the race for clean technology

    Clean mass produced technology, now there’s a thing.
    All of this green agenda could only possibly work with a far smaller world population.

    2. A pedant writes: it’s the anniversary of the day that the UK declared war on the German Empire. The war started when Germany invaded Belgium.

          4. I used to enjoy it!
            Especially on the TV when they had Russ Conway or Winnifred Atwell playing piano.

  11. Donald Trump pleads not guilty to criminal plot to overturn 2020 election. 4 August 2023.

    Donald Trump declared a “very sad day for America” as he pleaded not guilty to orchestrating a criminal plot to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election.

    At a historic court hearing in Washington on Thursday, the former president denied four charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States.

    One of the most interesting; though not reassuring, aspects of the struggle for power in the present day United States are its parallels with the Roman Republic. There too the entrenched authorities, the Optimates, tried to deny the people and their representatives in the Populares Party access to this and used the Law to prevent it. In the end this always proved unavailing and violence and assassination were employed. Eventually of course Caesar arose who possessed all those qualities that were necessary to triumph and make him the Ruler of the Roman World. His assassination came too late for the Optimates and the Republic was plunged into Civil War for the next twenty years. When this was resolved Democracy had been extinguished and Tyranny legitimised. .

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/03/donald-trump-says-criminal-charges-guarantee-re-election/

  12. Good morning all,

    Light cloud with sunny periods, wind in the Nor’-West, 13℃ forcasting 19℃. I haven’t been able to calculate the long-term average maximum temperature for August yet but I will get around to it next week when I’ve finished decorating daughter’s new home.

    Costa:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/03/costa-mural-trans-boycott-mastectomies/

    I was already staying out of them because I think they peddle over-priced shit, especially on the motorways. It beats me why anyone uses them, or Starbucks, or Cafe Nero, or any of the imitators. Once you’ve rediscovered proper tea (it must be loose-leaf) or coffee from a proper tea and coffee merchant you’ll never go near these places again. We seek out small independent cafés (yes, they are about) which serve loose-leaf tea and freshly-ground coffee with a pot of extra hot water. Any establishment which puts a Twinings tea-bag in a metal pot with hot water (not boiling) and charges the thick-end of £4 for it is immediately shunned.

  13. Good morning all,

    Light cloud with sunny periods, wind in the Nor’-West, 13℃ forcasting 19℃. I haven’t been able to calculate the long-term average maximum temperature for August yet but I will get around to it next week when I’ve finished decorating daughter’s new home.

    Costa:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/03/costa-mural-trans-boycott-mastectomies/

    I was already staying out of them because I think they peddle over-priced shit, especially on the motorways. It beats me why anyone uses them, or Starbucks, or Cafe Nero, or any of the imitators. Once you’ve rediscovered proper tea (it must be loose-leaf) or coffee from a proper tea and coffee merchant you’ll never go near these places again. We seek out small independent cafés (yes, they are about) which serve loose-leaf tea and freshly-ground coffee with a pot of extra hot water. Any establishment which puts a Twinings tea-bag in a metal pot with hot water (not boiling) and charges the thick-end of £4 for it is immediately shunned.

  14. Good morning, chums. The predicted monsoon for these parts will not now start until 10 am. Enjoy your day.

  15. Good morning all. A bright but cloudy with blue patches with 11°C, but at least it’s not raining.

    Yet.

  16. Re: Debanking of shooting clubs and game-shooting: Angling clubs and associations next:?

    1. Morning McPhee. Yes of course; anything that offends the Cultural Marxist ethic!

    3. 375111+ up ticks,

      Morning Bob,

      Most assuredly so, I would feel a great deal better if Anne was in the wings, waiting.

      1. Unfortunately the primogeniture laws don’t affect Andrew’s precedence over Anne. They’re effective only from Williams children’s generation onwards. 🙁

        1. 375111+ up ticks,

          Evening Siadc,

          If people power was applied
          in a very forceful manner, but with manners
          ie please / thank you, things would change very rapidly is my take on it.
          People have / will continue to die prematurely via state treacherous manoeuvring
          (RESET) better to go via saying “This is not of my doing”

      2. Unfortunately the primogeniture laws don’t affect Andrew’s precedence over Anne. They’re effective only from Williams children’s generation onwards. 🙁

  18. 375111+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Friday 4 August: Britain risks repeating past mistakes in the race for clean technology

    “Mistakes” for the last 40 years “mistakes”= organised chaos
    appertaining to a successful RESET conclusion.

    For clean technology we need first a clean governing body,
    open up fracking , mothballed coal mines, and top priory
    eradicate these current political scammers, the brown envelope brigade.

  19. RAF has intercepted 50 Russian jets in Baltic airspace. 4 August 2023.

    Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said British forces had been “working round-the-clock alongside our allies to keep Europe’s skies safe”.

    “The UK’s successful leadership of Nato’s air policing mission in Estonia, resulting in the interception of dozens of Russian aircraft by the RAF, sends a strong message to Putin that we stand united with our allies against any threat to our borders,” Mr Wallace said.

    Just a fillip to keep the peasants on side. It’s in pretty well every MSM publication you can find!

    P.S. It’s International not Baltic Airspace.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/raf-intercepted-50-russian-jets-baltic-airspace/

    1. How is it that they can keep the skies of Estonia safe, yet import a foreign horde happily and put theme up in hotels?

      1. We intercept in international airspace round the UK – to prevent them invading our own airspace

  20. Good Moaning.
    You can all relax.
    Grannie Allan and Granddaughter Allan have put the world to rights.
    p.s. much as I hate to admit modern technology has it moments, were we grateful for the aircon on the Lizzie Line.

  21. 375111+ up ticks,

    Let us not pussyfoot about “lock-downs KILL

    And if the voting pattern does not change radically we will witness lock- down fallout in the near future yet again,nasty consequences via the party first, more of the same brigade.

    breitbart,
    Lockdown Harmed Emotional Development of Children, UK Study Finds

  22. Aspiring lawyer stabbed to death in mistaken identity attack, judge says as killers jailed. 4 August 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b7a77e913f9e1c9225430d2ce143e1e95f521ef7521882342dd2179d9b5bff81.jpg

    Following a trial at the Old Bailey, Gedel and Ambersley were found guilty of murdering Mr Badzak in February 2021 and handed life sentences.

    Co-defendant Lior Agbayan, 20, fled to the Ivory Coast and has not returned, jurors were told.

    I guess he wasn’t as oppressed as he thought!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/man-who-murdered-aspiring-lawyer-jailed/

      1. It becomes more of a joke by the hour.
        Political classes have wrecked this country.

      1. My first question, before reading the text, was, which on of these fine fellows was the vic?

      2. I’m not surprised. They should be flogged, then flayed and then thrown in a lime pit to rot.

    3. Leonard Shapiro said much the same thing :

      “No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.”

    1. From the article:
      “If we had known – if it had been admitted – that Covid was an engineered pathogen, we would have recognised that concerns about Covid vaccine safety were legitimate.”
      In other words, the ‘conspiracy theorists’ were right all along to be wary of the conjabs.

      “In a gross error of judgment, Ardern’s department created a policy of exclusion aimed at those questioning the severity of Covid, the lab leak hypothesis, and Covid vaccine safety.”
      No, it was no ‘error of judgement’, she was following orders and was fully committed to the agenda.

    2. Haven’t read the article yet, but Ardern was one of the most authoritarian pushers of covid wickedness, and I don’t feel like letting her off the hook by suggesting she was played!

      1. She, like Turdeau and many other ‘leaders’, was fully on board with the whole agenda from day 1.

          3. That reminds me of the Doc Martin episode where the hapless Martin takes his son to the baby group at the library. The mothers sing, ‘Nobody likes me, everybody hates me. I think I’ll go and eat worms.’

    4. During the madness: “We [the government] are your only source of truth.”

  25. Morning all.
    Had a good night of rest and going to try and go out today- have a plan in mind.
    Weather is nice and supposed to be dry all day so a good day to go to the shop.
    I want to thank you all- this place has been a lifeline to me the last few days, although I have been emailing and speaking to friends etc. Thank you all for your support and kindness.

    2. Thank you Ann. Glad to see you have had a decent sleep and are ready to face the day.

    4. To echo what’s already been said, it’s encouraging to see you facing up to the day ahead. Little steps, one day at a time, will see improvements in your mental strength and resilience. This forum will continue to be a sounding board for you.

    7. How good to hear you had a good rest last night – makes all the difference in helping to face difficulties.
      Although most of us don’t know you ‘in the flesh’, we are all glad to be of some support.
      Are you going to the shop to restock the medicine Pinot?
      Take care.

    9. Just very glad to hear from you, Ann.
      Impressed that you can face NOTTling in your present circumstances.

        1. I think you’ve plenty of that, Ann, as you’ve shewn by going through all those adversities then just KBO.

          Go, girl.

    10. Are you trying out for a part as Muchelle in a rerun of Allo Allo? Listen carefully, I have a plan.

      Niceties see you surface.

  26. Yesterday I made a comment to a discussion about not eating various foods because animals might have urinated in the water. I said that everything we eat and drink has been through millions of bodies as matter can neither be created nor destroyed. I hade a reply that it was energy not matter. I looked up my original statement and found this.
    I found it to be almost poetic on the wonders of the world and, indeed, the universe. I hope you enjoy it.
    https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/conservation-matter-during-physical-and-chemical-changes/

    1. How does antimatter fit into the equation?
      Presumably in the dark matter and dark energy arena.

      4. Yummy ………….

        https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=9036ff04da2fe3e4JmltdHM9MTY5MTEwNzIwMCZpZ3VpZD0zNGIyYWE4OS01OWI2LTZmY2ItMzhhOC1iOWVhNTg4NTZlZjgmaW5zaWQ9NTIyMQ&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=34b2aa89-59b6-6fcb-38a8-b9ea58856ef8&psq=ghana+best+shito&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlYXNpYW5jb29rc2hvcC5jby51ay9naGFuYS1iZXN0LXNoaXRvLWhvdC1jaGlsbGktc2F1Y2Utd2l0aC1zaHJpbXAtLWZpc2gtOTIyOC1wLmFzcA&ntb=1

      1. I hope you had a lovely birthday.
        I wonder how Plum is, what a shame she took early retirement.

    3. I have long had, but perhaps a mislead impression. Yhat human urine has been a massive problem. Perhaps certain drugs washed through our systems are never successfully removed from the recycling systems we have. And too much oestrogen for instance, might have had an effect on the various
      often alarming results of conception.
      Any thoughts ?

      1. Thames Water asks pet owners not to flush dog-pooh as it contains parasites that are not destroyed by the purification system.

        1. Crikey, that’s a warning I’ve not seen before. It isn’t very reassuring to discover that the water purification systems are not robust. It’s not something I’d do it I had a dog but I’d not be in the least surprised if a minority of dog owners do that.

          1. Knew someone once who trained his dog to shit in the WC pan. Quite practical, really.

          3. U.S sewerage systems can cope. So the technology exists. As we have seen with raw sewage polluting our waterways and beaches British companies obviously don’t care.

          4. “British” companies = foreign owned companies, Why should they care? We only pay the money that makes their profits.

          2. On three separate occasions my local water supply was infected with leptospirosis.

            Weil’s disease from rat urine.

            I flush dog poo down the toilet. Dolly and Harry don’t have toxocara (roundworm eggs) because they are medicated monthly against it.

            I don’t trust the quality of tap water and drink from litre bottles. I know people are against single use plastic but it is a handy way to measure my intake. I have to drink 2 to 3 litres a day.
            Besides which…i no longer care.

          3. There are a number of spring water brands that come in glass bottles. I know of seven but there may well be many more. Always 330ml or 750ml bottles and of course it does work out expensive. I drink fairly equal quantities of water from glass bottles, plastic bottles and the tap via a filter jug. The other thing to look out for in spring water is the fluoride level. It’s naturally occurring of course but at different levels. For instance 0.07 in Scottish highland spring water but 0.2 in Harrogate water.

      2. Sorry Eddy but I’m no scientist. I suppose everything we eat, drink and do has some effect but I’m not qualified to have any great knowledge on the subject.

        1. I just wonder if areas where the drinking water has been recycled, possibly has a more adverse effect on the population. There are areas of the country where water comes directly from aquifers or naturally filled reservoirs and those from reservoirs were treated water is added, stored and used.
          I feel that there must be some diffence in content even after after treatment.

        1. That was one of my suspicions and whether it has had the same effect on our human population. Or that it’s expected to and possibly has led to all this unexplained mass (invasion) immigration.

    4. A very good read related to matter/energy is Lawrence M Krauss’s ‘a universe from nothing’. (The book’s title is in lower case). Not too technical, Krauss is very good at making his efforts readable to a wide audience.
      The idea that at the Quantum Level particles pop in and out of existence all the time is an amazing concept.

    5. ‘Atoms that were once in dinosaurs could now be in you’.
      That would explain Sosraboc…

    6. I think the difference was in the definition of matter – taking it to mean visible, tangible substances – e.g. burning a piece of paper – rather than on an atomic level.
      I (and my O Level physics teacher) stand corrected.

  27. 375111+ up ticks,

    What do we truly want……….. United people power

    When do we want it……………. Now, if not sooner.

    Why do we want it………………To create a boycotting club, inclusive of nail to bring to heel politico’s, pharmaceuticals,
    super-market managers etc,etc,

    Targeting opposition WORKS.

  28. Morning all 🙂😊
    No change in the weather.
    We’re hoping for a family BBQ or similar Sunday. We have a 41st birthday today.
    Last year for the big celebration we were all staying in a lovely house in Rock.
    And we all came home with some form of covid. But had a lovely time. 8 adults and three grand children. Now four.

    And until we can get rid of the type of people who only think they know everything, this country is unfortunately doomed.

  29. Morning, all. Light rain earlier and a few spots since.

    In one word how should the person being questioned be described? My opinion is shifty. These big Pharma spokespeople make run of mill the con-men look respectable. Kudos to the Australian Senator for probing, keeping his cool and expressing his disdain when ending the questioning.

    https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1687378773174362112

  30. SIR – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that any country that ducks the challenge of clean technology “will slide into irrelevance”, and that this is akin to “sticking to horsepower as others embrace the steam engine” (“Britain cowers as China leads revolution in clean tech”, Business, August 3). We have been here before.

    In the late 1940s, as Europe emerged from the rubble of the Second World War, the British government decided that, since we had plentiful supplies of coal, we should stick with outdated steam engines, unlike Germany, which (with our financial assistance, it has to be said) electrified its railways.

    This helps to explain why Europe now has many thousands of miles of high-speed rail track, while we languish at the bottom of the table with a pathetic 67 miles from London to the Channel, and little prospect of this changing in my lifetime. The Chinese have over 26,000 miles.

    Robert Harvey
    Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire

    Robert Harvey is only partly correct about post-WW2 developments in the UK (high-speed rail is an entirely different matter). He rightly mentions the financial aid given to Germany after WW2 but a lot of its immediate post-war railway rebuilding involved cheaper diesel traction (Germany was well ahead of the UK in both diesel and electric before the war). Here, the only major users of electric traction were the Southern Railway and the London Underground, although there were other small systems – North Tyneside, Wirral and Merseyside, Manchester to Bury (all 3rd rail DC), Manchester to Altrincham (overhead DC) and the Lancaster-Heysham railway, which was electrified before WW1 using a German overhead AC system.

    Attlee’s government had a dilemma with the railways – money and politics. It had already gone back on the wartime administration’s promise to compensate the companies (just as Lloyd George’s did after WW1). Diesel haulage would have been expensive, not just in capital terms but because of the cost of oil which the country could not afford. There was no agreement in British Railways technical management on which system of electrification to use – that wasn’t decided until the mid-50s when the Lancaster branch was used as a test bed for the overhead AC system in use today. The great idea of the government and early BR management was to keep the miners sweet by continuing to use coal for a steam railway and then electrify, with the power provided by, yes, new coal-fired power stations. Meanwhile, hundreds of new steam locos were built during the 1950s, many of them having a shockingly short working life.

    When the Tories did set about introducing diesel traction in the late 50s, it was a costly shambles, with hundreds of locos deployed without proper prototyping and testing. Inevitably, many were unreliable, some underpowered, while others were quickly made redundant by the rapid disappearance of goods traffic. Like steam, large numbers were scrapped within a decade or so.

    Malfunction in the public sector is nothing new.

    1. The Chinese don’t give a stuff about building high-speed railways through towns, people’s gardens and beauty spots, either. That helps.

    2. But HS2 didn’t need to be built all at once. It could have been built in phases, with specific, demonstrable results at each point. If one bit was problematic, oh well, there’s 3 others that are ok and returning value.

      But no. They wanted – because the EU told them to – do everything at once.

      1. There was never any need for HS2. A case could be made for relief lines to bypass the congested sections. High-speed (i.e. 200mph) railways are pointless in our small country.

        1. Aah, GWR, also known as God’s Wonderful Railway. Two of my great uncles were on the board and one Sir Frederick Dent, I think managed it for many years.

  31. Followed a link to The Express website and this banner appeared at the bottom of the screen. Now, there’s doubt in some quarters about the ability of the weather people being able to find the cheeks of their bums with their hands yet alone give an exact date for a heatwave. The banner isn’t linked so looking further will require research that I can’t be arsed to perform.
    Well, it is the Express. Maybe this time they’ll get it right!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e4e8bccd74c49595ca90e24deeeb2e6758b9c68379a7752a67d8bbc5a64f4a9.png

    1. I suppose if they repeat it every day, changing the date by a day each time, then they’ll get it right eventually!

  32. ‘Morning all

    Usual guff from the BBC – today’s top news item on their website: “Ocean heat record broken, with grim implications for the planet.”

    No mention of the huge underwater volcanic eruption last year that NASA said could raise global temperatures – https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9430dfafe836b056956e9cf1dd764d0a124cba92d90d157e9d39bd83262b9e5.jpg

      1. Apparently someone called out ‘rubbish’ after the obligatory modern piece at last night’s prom – must have made the composer’s day – no doubt now thinks his/her piece is almost on on a par with Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of spring’ .

          1. Blimey! That’s Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and numerous others put to the sword. When I hear JS Bach my thoughts turn to “too many notes”.

  34. Refused a drink, scapegoated by MPs: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller life in Britain is only getting harder. 4 August 2023.

    When I arrived at the north London pub 20 minutes late, my friend was midway through her latest romantic drama. She was having relationship troubles with her (live-in!) boyfriend of two weeks, and with every twist and turn in the story our noisy histrionics increased. Across from us, a group of about 30 people sat spread across several tables, quietly enjoying a twixtmas drink. After an abortive attempt to secure a drink through the app, I went to the bar.

    As I arrived, two of the people from the tables across from us were also there, attempting to do the same. The staff behind the bar refused to serve them and when they argued back, the whole bar was shut. As I returned to the table, my friend was still in full flow. Over her shoulder, I saw the ominous hi-vis jackets of two Metropolitan police officers enter the pub and talk to the bar staff before approaching the group next to us. Before long another dozen or so arrived, demanding that they leave. Their crime? Being Travellers in a pub.

    Ahhh! The trials of being Trailer Trash. I remember their occupying the local Council Office Car Park after being offended by them blocking access to the roadside ones around town and then threatening any passerby who showed interest. Then once a stream of nose to tail vehicles (so they couldn’t be detained) on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Theft, Sewage, Rubbish and Criminal Damage is a corollary of their presence. No one on their right mind would want these people around.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/03/gypsy-traveller-life-political-leaflet-mps-racism

    1. When a senior member of the traveler community dies they don’t appear short of cash when the cortege consists of a 100 white Bentleys.

    2. “After an abortive attempt to secure a drink through the app, I went to the bar..”

      Poor little mite.

    3. Good. They’re scum. They litter, steal, damage and spoil everything. If they want to travel they can keep going – permanently.

      They pay no tax, are all welfare con artists, thieves and wasters. If the state were not so limp wristed as soon as they arrived plod would tell them to bugger off, destroying a few of their no doubt stolen vehicles while they’re at it.

      1. I reported to the police some travellers who had camped at a picnic site/memorial but was told they couldn’t do anything and to let the council know as it was their responsibility. I reported this and got an email back saying I would get a response within 10 days. What a joke, no wonder pikeys know they can get away with anything because the council don’t do anything. Happens every year up here.

        1. Councillors are on a pretty good whack in terms of payment for whatever they do (or don’t do) + expenses in some cases. Another trough for willing snouts.

    4. Our dear old friend, Jim, is 88 years old.

      Unknown to him some gypsies had been watching him when he collected some money from the post office in the village in Brittany where he lives.

      No sooner had he got home than there was a knock on his door and a couple with a child asked if the child could use his lavatory.

      While Jim’s back was turned they managed to lift his wallet off the sideboard where he had placed it.

      It was not until after they had left that Jim noticed that his wallet had gone which not only contained €500 in cash but his credit cards, driving licence, health care entitlement card as well.

      Jim came round to us in some distress and Caroline notified Jim’s banks and managed to get most of the money back from the credit cards which had been used by the thieves but we discovered from the record of card use that the thieves had bought fuel on the motorways heading south and they had reached the South of France several hundred miles away.

      According to the Police this is very much in the style of how gypsies operate and we should be very wary of ever letting them into our homes. If you have been robbed by gypsies is it racial bigotry to be wary of gypsies or is it just straightforward common sense?

      1. We had the child asking for a drink of water trick some 10 years ago in Colchester.
        They chose the wrong area: in our leafy suburb, unattended children are not wandering around at 9.0 o’clock at night.

  35. Refused a drink, scapegoated by MPs: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller life in Britain is only getting harder. 4 August 2023.

    When I arrived at the north London pub 20 minutes late, my friend was midway through her latest romantic drama. She was having relationship troubles with her (live-in!) boyfriend of two weeks, and with every twist and turn in the story our noisy histrionics increased. Across from us, a group of about 30 people sat spread across several tables, quietly enjoying a twixtmas drink. After an abortive attempt to secure a drink through the app, I went to the bar.

    As I arrived, two of the people from the tables across from us were also there, attempting to do the same. The staff behind the bar refused to serve them and when they argued back, the whole bar was shut. As I returned to the table, my friend was still in full flow. Over her shoulder, I saw the ominous hi-vis jackets of two Metropolitan police officers enter the pub and talk to the bar staff before approaching the group next to us. Before long another dozen or so arrived, demanding that they leave. Their crime? Being Travellers in a pub.

    Ahhh! The trials of being Trailer Trash. I remember their occupying the local Council Office Car Park after being offended by them blocking access to the roadside ones around town and then threatening any passerby who showed interest. Then once a stream of nose to tail vehicles (so they couldn’t be detained) on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Theft, Sewage, Rubbish and Criminal Damage is a corollary of their presence. No one on their right mind would want these people around.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/03/gypsy-traveller-life-political-leaflet-mps-racism

  36. Apparently the phrase “black market” is raycist, and you should say “illegal market” instead.

    Now, I know that the black market has bad connotations from WWII, when everyone believed in the Government and sticking by the rules, but ….. circumstances have changed since then.
    In the light of the coming CBDCs, I would suggest that “unofficial market” or “free market” would be more suitable. “Black market” could be a literal description of those engaged in the activity anyway, if the current market in illegal drugs is anything to go by.

      1. It’s not possible to be racist to white people. Don’t you know anything, Honky !

      3. Whitehall ……..the list is endless some sensible one needs to tell them to shut up. …………..oh hang on a mo !!!

    4. How will residents of two Lancashire towns react to renaming them Illegalpool and Illegalburn?

  37. Morning all,

    BBC reports the finding by EU’s Copernicus ghttps://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-temperature-over-all-ice-free-oceans-may-2023-was-highest-record that sea temperatures have reached a global high (well at least the bits of the Earth that don’t have ice on them)

    It also says that the sea absorbs heat, provides oxygen and controls the Earth’s weather patterns.

    That leads me to think that the sea may being heated from beneath through underwater fumeroles https://youtu.be/Aqti5yTuCeA , that our weather patterns are being contolled by ocean currents and global sea water would benefit from the melting of the ice caps.

    1. Climate scientists probably spend their time peeing into the sea next to the thermometers.

      1. Great Steaming Fumeroles! should become an enraged exclamation, much as Blistering Barnacles! did.

  38. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da2fbe6512db6c7f0d2a84453b25127d44eb6908c5bcab2a854984ad8b318789.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/banks-not-real-enemy-of-savings-taxman-hmrc-treasury/

    BTL – Ratty Wrattstrangler

    Before assessing the taxable element of interest received from your bank the inflation index should be applied.

    If for example my bank gives me 4% in income on my deposit and the inflation rate is 5% then no income tax should be payable as I am making a loss – a negative income.

    If the inflation rate is 5% and I receive 8% in interest then just 3% should be assessed as taxable.

    That would be a bit more fair. But life’s not fair, is it?

    2. Anyone who leaves their savings in the bank, meekly accepting the double whammy of interest rates lower than inflation and income tax upon the pitiful sum – deserves what they get!

    2. Apparently a lot of folk want her to step down – I think it’s call De-Finesteintration….?

  41. It isn’t racist to object to new traveller sites

    David T C Davies is perfectly justified in raising his constituents’ concerns – that is the job of an MP

    TOM HARRIS • 3rd August 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d92842720606d32a10566ae71e65c4e8a4416118e91c7e3c66063cbc7f6d71ce.jpg
    Is it racist to object to a travellers’ site in your back yard? Or in your constituency? The Welsh secretary, David TC Davies, stands so accused after he distributed a leaflet to his constituents claiming that the local Labour-run council in his Monmouth constituency was planning to open a number of such sites with too little local consultation.

    The leaflet was immediately branded as racist and, inevitably, referred to the police who, contrary to the assumption of previous generations, actually don’t have anything better to do.

    It will be illuminating to learn if the police eventually uphold any complaint and bring charges against Mr Davies. From the complaints and comments already made, the most inflammatory language cited is Mr Davies’s somewhat rhetorical question: “Would you like to see a Traveller site next to your house?”

    For complete fairness, allow me to quote more extensively from the offending leaflet:

    “The Labour-controlled Monmouth County Council are intending to establish a number of gypsy traveller sites in the county.

    “Local MP David Davies believes that there’s been insufficient consultation with the members of the public affected. The Council plans a short consultation during the summer holiday period when many residents will be unable to participate.

    “It is vital that local residents have a proper say in this matter. To ensure that your views can be taken into account, support David’s efforts in getting the Council to carry out proper consultation by completing and returning the form overleaf.”

    Now, it seems clear that Mr Davies’s intentions in all of this is not to construct a broad coalition of residents’ support in favour of travellers’ sites. But is that in itself a racist motive? After all, local authorities are legally obliged to consult on such plans, and we must assume that residents, were they so minded to oppose those plans, could legally do so without fear that they would be labelled racist and investigated by the police as a result.

    Similarly, it would be entirely acceptable for any resident to support such a scheme and to answer “Yes” to Mr Davies’s question at the top of the leaflet: “Would you like to see a Traveller site next to your house?”

    Perhaps it is the view of Mr Davies’s detractors that the planning process should be changed so that travellers’ sites could be established wherever a council wants without having to consult anyone at all? It would be acceptable to take that view, though I suspect it would be very much a minority position.

    In a country where society is constructed on the basis that everyone is equal before the law, it would surely be wrong to put the wishes of travellers and their supporters above the wishes of residents and their elected representatives. It would also be wrong to conclude that every proposed travellers’ site should be rejected on the basis that any opposition exists.

    That’s why we have a planning process. That’s why local residents are given the opportunity to give their views on such proposals. That’s why MPs and councillors have the right to consult their own electors on any matter, even one as sensitive as this one.

    This feels like one of those occasions where opponents of Mr Davies might want to silence him with the dreaded (and, let’s face it, overused) slur of “racist”, rather than have to justify the council’s plans to unhappy residents.

    Is the leaflet, in fact, inflammatory? Does it err on the wrong side of equality law? That seems doubtful, since Mr Davies’s critics seem to be assuming not particularly well hidden and dubious motives behind the leaflet, but can’t actually point to hard and fast examples of what we must now term “hate speech”.

    In fact, as someone experienced in drafting political leaflets on a wide range of subjects, this looks to me like Mr Davies, undoubtedly aware of the sensitivities involved and anticipating the outrage it would provoke, has taken extraordinary care not to use inflammatory language.

    The worst thing proponents of “inclusion” could do would be to try to restrict Mr Davies’s right to inform and consult his constituents on this issue. What mindset concludes that preventing people from expressing a contrary view leads to more, not less, tolerance of others? A full, open and transparent consultation exercise, with conclusions that are well argued and backed up by facts and figures, would be a far more powerful response to Mr Davies’s grassroots campaign than tiresome efforts to shut him up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/it-isnt-racist-to-object-to-new-traveller-sites/

    2. The only place for pikey sites is back in Ireland.
      Why do ‘travellers’ need sites – they travel

    1. OMG who the hell is making so much money out of yet another government cock up ?

      Not that you would know this from the first stage of the Covid-19 Inquiry, which has cost an eye-watering £40million after just 23 days of hearings. A further £1.6million will be spent on hiring high-end advertising agency M&C Saatchi to promote a scheme asking for people to share their experiences of the pandemic.

      1. It all facilitates the transfer of wealth. Impoverishing the people and enriching the lizard elites.

      2. Lady Hallett: “We want to feel your pain.”
        Hugo Keith QC, Lead Counsel to the Inquiry: “Brexit is to blame.”

    2. The question should be, what organisation had so much influence (money) as to cause all western governments to react in exactly the same way? The PCR tests were never intended as a diagnostic tool and the lateral flow tests were even less reliable. The plan/scamdemic was totally organised and all that followed – lockdowns, masks social distancing – all making people less distrustful of others – and then, the pièce de resistance, the gene therapy jabs produced miraculously within 8/9 months of a “novel” virus. The whole episode stinks.

      The sad thing is, if another “novel virus” suddenly appears or if HMG does not object before 1st December this year to the IHR amendments, 194 signatory countries will be legally bound to carry out whatever the WHO dictates, including more jabs etc. etc.

      Hope I haven’t DUP,imaged someone else’s post – no lookee under. Apols.

      Meant to say “duplicated” in last sentence

  44. Every cloud as a silver lining….call it the Stealensky effect….

    Amid the surge in NATO members’ military spending as a result of the war in Ukraine, BAE Systems announced that – during the first half of this year – its net profits soared with a 57 percent increase. The British arms industry giant reported its huge windfall on Wednesday.

    BAE Systems stated its revenue swelled to 11 billion pounds, an increase of 13 percent, while profits after taxes increased to 965 million pounds ($1.2 billion) during the first six months of 2023. This is compared with 615 million pounds in the same period last year.

  45. I thought you might be interested to know that the Public Health Scotland nurse who bothered me for 45 minutes the other day, about a case of suspected ecoli in Twin 2, turns out to be the lunatic nurse who returned from Sierra Leone in 2018, carrying Ebola! She was subsequently cleared of bringing disrepute to the nursing profession because she was suffering from the results of the illness!!😵‍💫
    She went on to have twins by a disabled, gay donor and is now phoning people like me to ask what my poo looks like! Why is she still employed by anyone?
    Edit to say that it was not ecoli, but they have failed to tell us what it was! Should I phone Pauline Cafferkey?

    3. Didn’t she hide the fact that her temperature was raised when she boarded the plane?

      1. That’s the one….
        She’d also been through another airport prior to Glasgow! And after she’d been ‘saved’ she wanted to go back….😱Blooming nutter!

    1. Afternoon Sue, The twelve o’clock BBC News led with the worlds hottest sea temperatures ever. Presumably not gathered at the North Pole.

      2. The ocean temperature was taken just after an ocean liner had passed by and emptied the sewage

          2. Perhaps we could see a BBC science reporter standing in front of the global thermometer doing their piece to camera.

          3. With that amount of hot air don’t be surprised if the recorded temperature is over 50oC…!

    2. Can’t see that affecting ambient temperature, weather recording apparatus is well away from the runway on airfields

      1. The reading immediately before the record one was almost a degree cooler. As was the reading immediately after it.

    5. Is there any statistic that the PTB present us with that has not been fiddled with and distorted to give the result they want to tell us?

    7. I share The Daily Sceptics doubts about the official UK temperature record, mainly because of the brief spike in temperature when Typhoon jets were landing at approximately the same time, however, its report is not without flaws. It says the weather station is sited right next to the runway, but the nearest tarmacked feature I’ve found is a taxiway, not the main runway. Whether that section of taxiway was in use that day depends on the direction the Typhoons landed. If they landed at the east end, the taxiway from the west end to the parking bay doesn’t take them immediately past the weather station, therefore more needs to be known about the landings to link the two.

      The Vision News website links Typhoon take-offs – not landings – to corruption of temperature data at the site. It draws concentric rings at 10, 30 and 100 metres from the weather station but the only strip of tarmac to fall within the 30 and 100 meter rings is the taxiway, not runway.

      https://www.visionnews.online/post/met-office-used-jet-engine-wake-in-record-temperature-claim

      https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3d0183_d1f8e95b0ada4e92a4f946e5a16f139b~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_740,h_645,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/3d0183_d1f8e95b0ada4e92a4f946e5a16f139b~mv2.png

      The Google Maps satellite view of the weather station and surrounding airfield – roughly in the centre of the image – shows the main runway at something like 150 metres from the weather station at its nearest point.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/RAF+Coningsby/@53.09393,-0.1753289,518m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4878724361cba713:0x17ec5c5f02eb395d!8m2!3d53.0991209!4d-0.1701335!16zL20vMDJ2cWNx?entry=ttu

      You can see how the taxiways fan out from the main runway at either end but, as I’ve said, if they landed from the east, then the taxiway from the west end to the parking bay doesn’t pass the weather station.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/RAF+Coningsby/@53.0919971,-0.1759726,2072m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4878724361cba713:0x17ec5c5f02eb395d!8m2!3d53.0991209!4d-0.1701335!16zL20vMDJ2cWNx?entry=ttu

      Here’s the aircraft parking bay towards the western end of the airbase.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/RAF+Coningsby/@53.0941523,-0.181616,518m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4878724361cba713:0x17ec5c5f02eb395d!8m2!3d53.0991209!4d-0.1701335!16zL20vMDJ2cWNx?entry=ttu

      As NTTL has men with RAF experience, I’d appreciate their considered views of my observations.

      1. Sorry, Stig, but if the weather station is the contraption, dead centre of your Google Maps link, it’s 67m from the edge of the runway, and 89m from the edge of the Northern taxiway.

        I have no RAF experience, as such, but I have worked on construction sites on RAF & USAF bases. I once had a close encounter with an approaching Tornado GR5 on the Northern taxiway at RAF Marham. I shouldn’t have been given clearance to be there. Only swift evasive action (i.e. a rapid about turn and flooring the accelerator) saved the paintwork on my company Vauxhall Nova (I wasn’t particularly senior in those days). Come to think of it, it might have brought forward my elevation to an Astra…

        1. The URL links I copied from the Google Maps website have not reproduced the images in the same way on NTTL as they appeared to me on the Google Chrome tab I had open. You might have to open the links in separate tabs to see them as I did. Believe me, the northern taxiway is much closer to the weather station than the runway. The strip of tarmac shown on the Visions News image with the concentric rings is that of the northern taxiway.

    1. Especially easy to reach 97% when you discard thousands of the papers who don’t tell you what you wanted to hear:

      https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/putting-the-con-in-consensus-not-only-is-there-no-97-per-cent-consensus-among-climate-scientists-many-misunderstand-core-issues

      In 2012 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members, receiving 1,862 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly man-made (the IPCC position). The remaining 48% either think it happened but natural causes explain at least half of it, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. Furthermore, 53% agree that there is conflict among AMS members on the question.

    1. I confess to surprise at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center being the source of this factoid. However, digging a little deeper reveals it’s located in Queens, New York City. The world hasn’t shifted on its axis after all. (Actually, it does, but that’s a whole different subject.)

      1. If the thermometer had originated from a hospital in Jamaica in 1709, that would be impressive!

        1. If anything had ever originated in Jamaica that was of the least bit use to humankind, that would be impressive…

      1. Well, one knows where to shove it for the most accurate reading!

        A childhood memory I’ve never forgotten was the reaction of our family dog to having his temperature taken for the first time. Turned his head very slowly so his eyes met the Vet with an expression that really did say, “W h a t the hell…”!!

    3. “The Name of the Rose” made me check the date for the invention of spectacles.
      William de Baskerville uses them c.1320.
      Apparently glasses as we know them were invented in Italy c. 1280.
      That did surprise me.

  49. These savages see no wrong in their behaviour, and will probably bring up their sons to similarly regard their own wives and daughters as property to control, humiliate and abuse as they wish.
    No doubt all living on our taxes.
    The foolish daughter even helped prevent her violent father from going to prison. Stockholm syndrome?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12372633/Father-battered-daughter-metal-bar-school-meet-boy-GCSE-exam-jail-mercy-plea.html

    1. The judge should have disregarded the daughter’s request for leniency and banged him up for twenty years without window or a compass.

        1. I would, every chance, Bill, fortunately we don’t seem to have any here in The Borders.

      2. With the hope that the other inmates would deal with him ‘appropriately’ – on second thoughts, given the significant numbers of his fellow savages detained, they’d probably protect one of their own.

      3. Jesus wept!

        During the assault Alinzi accused his daughter of secretly planning to a meet a boy ahead of the exam and berated her for wearing makeup. But it later emerged the real reason she did so was to cover up the bruises he had inflicted on her.

    2. The judge should have disregarded the daughter’s request for leniency and banged him up for twenty years without window or a compass.

      1. We stand no chance – these savages are already out-breeding us. In comparison, they actually make many ‘travellers’ seem like decent citizens.

    6. It’s a little unfair to blame the victim. She’s only 16, she can’t take on board cutting herself off from her entire family, which is what would happen if she made an enemy of her father in public.

      2. And the defence lawyer is an immigrant (or of very recent immigrant stock) himself. Never forget that the ghastly Sad Dick Khan of Pakistani parentage, was a defence lawyer for an Islamic terrorist bomber. They just stink.

      3. It’s in his ‘culture’ to attack and otherwise mistreat females, whether they are family members or not.

    8. She was probably put under duress by the rest of the family. Deport them to places where that kind of behaviour is acceptable.

    9. An “honour” killing will ensure she doesn’t make 20.
      The mothers are often as vile as the fathers, particularly when there’s a sonny boy (aka golden balls) in the household.

      2. Such a murder would serve as training for any sons in how to deal with complaining female relatives.

  50. The lengths to which the globalists and their henchmen/women will go to force their will on the people look to be too fantastic to believe, except that it is either happening or actively being considered. GM mosquitoes have been released in both Texas and Florida and possibly New York State.

    Here is Naomi Wolf, the lady who has been instrumental in the Pfizer files exposé, explaining what is being prepared for the future. How do the people responsible get carte-blanche to do what they want no matter whom they may injure or kill? Money is one driver, of course, but is there an ideological side to these dangerous shenanigans within the political class who turn a blind eye?

    War Room – Naomi Wolf

  51. DT headline:“Ukraine ‘blows hole’ in Russian warship”

    Clever country that Ukraine. A lump of earth that can fire a missile – no people needed.

    1. Is Eddie Izzard satisfying a deep yearning in wanting to be treated as female or is the comedian having a laugh at the expense of malleable dupes? It would be hilarious if he announced he was pranking the gullible.

        1. Don’t bet too heavily against an Izzard victory. A voting population happy to elect Caroline Lucas to Parliament is clearly open to choosing Izzard next year.

          3. Part of me hopes Izzard is elected. The fun and games in the House of Commons as the Speaker and Speaker deputies attempt to police misnaming/mispronouning/misgendering Eddie/Suzy will be a joy to behold.

          5. Spoilsport! I was looking forward to petty arguments on the floor of the chamber.

      2. Is it Izzards or Lizards that David Icke tells us are taking over the world?

    3. It’s not she and her, it’s he and his.

      I’m not transphobic, I’m not at all afraid of it

      1. The Latin suffixes -misia and -odium are more appropriate in announcing a hatred of (rather than a fear of something).

        Hence I suffer from transmisia (or transodium), as well as islamomisia (or islamodium), veganmisia (veganodium) and Leftymisia (or Leftyodium). Let the weirdos, snowflakes, quarter-brains and freaks chew on that.

        2. It’s years since I took any Latin lessons and I’ve not kept it up, Too busy with German and French and getting by with Swedish and Spanish. C’est la vie.

      1. Honourable Lady is often used when addressing women MPs. Someone is sure to use it in the Commons if Eddie/Suzy is elected.

    6. I suppose we will now find out whether there are any limits to Brighton’s battiness.

      2. He’s probably just landed.

        Good to see you back, Maggie, hope the gloom and doom ain’t too much.

        You were sorely missed. Love and hugs to get you over it and, like Ann, just KBO.

    2. Hello Maggie. I hope you’re over the worst of your low point and ready to return to the fray more often.

    4. Ah! In-de-water. I’m slow on the up-take with these things but the penny finally dropped! Welcom back T_B!

      1. Thick people usually don’t have the capacity to consider how thick they are. A great pity.

  55. A women’s cricket match is in progress between the Hula Hoops and the POM-BEARS in Southampton. Actually it’s the Welsh Fire and Southern Braves but I prefer to pair them according to the snack logos on their shirts, all eight teams in The Hundred being sponsored by KP Snacks. The others are Butterkist, Tyrell’s, McCoy’s, popchips, KP Nuts and Skips.

    4. I have no interest, whatsoever, in kiddie cricket and simply do not watch it. I would sooner watch schoolchildren playing rounders on the playground.
      I watch test matches, four-day games and the occasional 50-over match. Proper cricket.

      1. I find it just as engrossing as the older formats.

        I did, though, attempt to follow a baseball match yesterday evening between Toronto and Baltimore and I remained quite baffled as to how the match was scored and the basic rules.

        1. Sitting at the bar in a Santa Monica restaurant I was clearly perplexed whilst watching a game of American Football on the telly behind the bar. A local, sitting next to me, saw my evident confusion, realised I was an ‘out-of-towner’ so kindly commenced to explain the arcane rules of the sport. I understood it a little bit better when I left. Not a lot, just a little.

    1. Charles wants a vastly reduced peasantry to occupy picturesque cottages and till the land, stopping occasionally for a bout of Morris dancing

      which he will view from the back of his Bentley

      while other peasants queue for the Bus.

    1. I don’t get it. Are the goats representative of a Government Of All the Talents? Or are they symbolic of the judiciary?

  59. The eco-cultists’ war against the car is built on fantasy and delusion

    No, people don’t drive because public transport is poor, and cycling is a rich man’s faddish luxury

    DAVID FROST • 3rd August 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce97c1ae65c347cf35c56d9969e8a7cec6a7a2a458573cc7083d714c6d443d5f.jpg
    Where’s a teenage joy-rider when you need one?
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Everything is the culture war nowadays. It may have started over Black Lives Matter and trans rights. But it hasn’t stopped there. Dip into social media with an opinion on cars, public transport, or cycling, and you’d better be prepared for some serious abuse back.

    The Uxbridge by-election brought this to the surface. It was a single-issue vote about Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand his Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – and the result showed that people in outer London really don’t like it.

    But make the case for cars in outer London – or anywhere else for that matter – and people will accuse you of wanting to kill children. Suggest that cycling doesn’t work for everyone, or argue that public transport can’t reach everywhere in the country, and you will be told you are a selfish planet-destroyer who would concrete over our national parks given half a chance. [† There will much concreting-over of all kinds of parks if the invasion continues. These creeps are unlikely to speak out against that.]

    ULEZ may not be a net zero measure as such, but it is certainly part of what I call the Net Zero Mentality. That’s the belief that it’s a serious possibility in a modern society for us all to live in the kind of place you find in the cuter children’s TV programmes, Camberwick Green or Balamory, where there is no traffic, no industry, and everything is available close by.

    This vision, whether its proponents admit it or not, underlies the “15-minute city” view of the world. In fact, it’s another of those prelapsarian fantasies that cultists have had as long as Western society has existed: the return to the lost Eden, living sustainably in harmony with nature.

    Those around the world who actually have to live such a life generally want to get out of it [see above †]. But here in Britain, too many of its fanatical proponents are coming to power – for a time. Mainly they are Green, Liberal Democrat, or Labour, but there are some in the Conservative party, too.

    They get voted in because their plans sound warm and cuddly – but voters then tend to revolt against the specifics. That’s what happened in Uxbridge. That’s what happened in Brighton: even Labour seemed preferable to four more years of deranged Green policy-making. And it even happened to the so-called Conservative council in Canterbury.

    There’s a reason for this. It’s that the normal needs of modern existence can’t be made to fit with utopian schemes for how we should get around. That’s why about 85 per cent of journeys in this country are made by car. The only way that figure is going to change is if governments curb car use by law – as they are increasingly trying to do.

    Public transport just can’t fill the gap. It’s good mainly at two things: moving people to and from the centre in highly dense urban areas like London, and serving the limited market for point to point, city centre to city centre, travel. Almost everywhere else, the fixed paths of trams, trains and tubes can’t cope with the different patterns of travel for work, for schools, for families.

    In short, they generally don’t go where people want to go. Even when they do, they don’t do so all the time; taking young children, pushchairs, or bags is cumbersome on trains and buses; and for many people there is a real safety concern.

    That is not going to change, because public transport is cripplingly expensive. Just running the railways cost £13 billion in subsidy last year – nearly £500 per household, paid by everyone whether you get on a train or not. HS2 has so far cost £20 billion and given us nothing at all.

    And look at the costs of expanding public transport in London. The Jubilee Line extension cost £3.5 billion – more than £6 billion in today’s money – and that bought half a tube line, ten miles long. Crossrail cost in excess of £18 billion, to a large extent running on existing lines. [73 route miles, of which about 13 is new tunnelling.]

    Outer London is four times as big as Inner. Just imagine the cost of a genuine new network that could get people out of cars. And then the fares. And then ask yourself where we would get all the extra train and bus drivers from. Then multiply this around our other cities and you begin to see that the problem is insurmountable.

    What about cycling, the other supposed panacea solution? Yes, it’s a bit more flexible, or can be. But for families or anyone carrying anything much, it’s even more difficult than public transport. It’s no fun in the rain or the dark. And it’s at least ten times as dangerous as getting in a car (the situation is similar in cycling paradises like the Netherlands).

    Studies have shown that the countries where most people cycle are small and wealthy – Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria. Cycling doesn’t make them rich – they do it because they are already rich. It’s not a substitute for normal methods of transport, it’s an add-on.

    Apart from Denmark, all have higher car ownership than the UK. Apart from Norway, most of which is uninhabited, they all have more than twice as much motorway per square mile than Britain (the Netherlands has four times as much).

    In the West, cycling is a luxury good for a small minority, the rich or people without commitments, the same kind of thing as food fads, farmers’ markets, or buying your carbon offsets for the summer holiday in Tuscany. It’s never going to be a serious way of moving people around – unless governments make all the alternatives too difficult.

    There is no point in kidding ourselves. In most circumstances, when people can use cars, they choose to do so. If we want people to use alternatives, the country has to get a lot richer. That means growing the economy and it means reducing tax and spend, not boosting it further. Vast new spending on public transport or cycle lanes is fashionable displacement activity, not serious policy.

    There is of course one last thing cars provide. They give you freedom. Once you have a car, you can go where you want, when you want. You aren’t limited to where and when the government, City Hall, or your local council, want you to travel.

    Even people in inner London sometimes want to go somewhere where TfL won’t take them. There will never be a substitute for this – and governments that value a free society shouldn’t try to force one on a free people.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/eco-cultist-war-on-car-is-built-on-fantasy-and-delusion/

  60. The eco-cultists’ war against the car is built on fantasy and delusion

    No, people don’t drive because public transport is poor, and cycling is a rich man’s faddish luxury

    DAVID FROST • 3rd August 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce97c1ae65c347cf35c56d9969e8a7cec6a7a2a458573cc7083d714c6d443d5f.jpg
    Where’s a teenage joy-rider when you need one?
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Everything is the culture war nowadays. It may have started over Black Lives Matter and trans rights. But it hasn’t stopped there. Dip into social media with an opinion on cars, public transport, or cycling, and you’d better be prepared for some serious abuse back.

    The Uxbridge by-election brought this to the surface. It was a single-issue vote about Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand his Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – and the result showed that people in outer London really don’t like it.

    But make the case for cars in outer London – or anywhere else for that matter – and people will accuse you of wanting to kill children. Suggest that cycling doesn’t work for everyone, or argue that public transport can’t reach everywhere in the country, and you will be told you are a selfish planet-destroyer who would concrete over our national parks given half a chance. [† There will much concreting-over of all kinds of parks if the invasion continues. These creeps are unlikely to speak out against that.]

    ULEZ may not be a net zero measure as such, but it is certainly part of what I call the Net Zero Mentality. That’s the belief that it’s a serious possibility in a modern society for us all to live in the kind of place you find in the cuter children’s TV programmes, Camberwick Green or Balamory, where there is no traffic, no industry, and everything is available close by.

    This vision, whether its proponents admit it or not, underlies the “15-minute city” view of the world. In fact, it’s another of those prelapsarian fantasies that cultists have had as long as Western society has existed: the return to the lost Eden, living sustainably in harmony with nature.

    Those around the world who actually have to live such a life generally want to get out of it [see above †]. But here in Britain, too many of its fanatical proponents are coming to power – for a time. Mainly they are Green, Liberal Democrat, or Labour, but there are some in the Conservative party, too.

    They get voted in because their plans sound warm and cuddly – but voters then tend to revolt against the specifics. That’s what happened in Uxbridge. That’s what happened in Brighton: even Labour seemed preferable to four more years of deranged Green policy-making. And it even happened to the so-called Conservative council in Canterbury.

    There’s a reason for this. It’s that the normal needs of modern existence can’t be made to fit with utopian schemes for how we should get around. That’s why about 85 per cent of journeys in this country are made by car. The only way that figure is going to change is if governments curb car use by law – as they are increasingly trying to do.

    Public transport just can’t fill the gap. It’s good mainly at two things: moving people to and from the centre in highly dense urban areas like London, and serving the limited market for point to point, city centre to city centre, travel. Almost everywhere else, the fixed paths of trams, trains and tubes can’t cope with the different patterns of travel for work, for schools, for families.

    In short, they generally don’t go where people want to go. Even when they do, they don’t do so all the time; taking young children, pushchairs, or bags is cumbersome on trains and buses; and for many people there is a real safety concern.

    That is not going to change, because public transport is cripplingly expensive. Just running the railways cost £13 billion in subsidy last year – nearly £500 per household, paid by everyone whether you get on a train or not. HS2 has so far cost £20 billion and given us nothing at all.

    And look at the costs of expanding public transport in London. The Jubilee Line extension cost £3.5 billion – more than £6 billion in today’s money – and that bought half a tube line, ten miles long. Crossrail cost in excess of £18 billion, to a large extent running on existing lines. [73 route miles, of which about 13 is new tunnelling.]

    Outer London is four times as big as Inner. Just imagine the cost of a genuine new network that could get people out of cars. And then the fares. And then ask yourself where we would get all the extra train and bus drivers from. Then multiply this around our other cities and you begin to see that the problem is insurmountable.

    What about cycling, the other supposed panacea solution? Yes, it’s a bit more flexible, or can be. But for families or anyone carrying anything much, it’s even more difficult than public transport. It’s no fun in the rain or the dark. And it’s at least ten times as dangerous as getting in a car (the situation is similar in cycling paradises like the Netherlands).

    Studies have shown that the countries where most people cycle are small and wealthy – Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria. Cycling doesn’t make them rich – they do it because they are already rich. It’s not a substitute for normal methods of transport, it’s an add-on.

    Apart from Denmark, all have higher car ownership than the UK. Apart from Norway, most of which is uninhabited, they all have more than twice as much motorway per square mile than Britain (the Netherlands has four times as much).

    In the West, cycling is a luxury good for a small minority, the rich or people without commitments, the same kind of thing as food fads, farmers’ markets, or buying your carbon offsets for the summer holiday in Tuscany. It’s never going to be a serious way of moving people around – unless governments make all the alternatives too difficult.

    There is no point in kidding ourselves. In most circumstances, when people can use cars, they choose to do so. If we want people to use alternatives, the country has to get a lot richer. That means growing the economy and it means reducing tax and spend, not boosting it further. Vast new spending on public transport or cycle lanes is fashionable displacement activity, not serious policy.

    There is of course one last thing cars provide. They give you freedom. Once you have a car, you can go where you want, when you want. You aren’t limited to where and when the government, City Hall, or your local council, want you to travel.

    Even people in inner London sometimes want to go somewhere where TfL won’t take them. There will never be a substitute for this – and governments that value a free society shouldn’t try to force one on a free people.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/eco-cultist-war-on-car-is-built-on-fantasy-and-delusion/

  61. The eco-cultists’ war against the car is built on fantasy and delusion

    No, people don’t drive because public transport is poor, and cycling is a rich man’s faddish luxury

    DAVID FROST • 3rd August 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce97c1ae65c347cf35c56d9969e8a7cec6a7a2a458573cc7083d714c6d443d5f.jpg
    Where’s a teenage joy-rider when you need one?
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Everything is the culture war nowadays. It may have started over Black Lives Matter and trans rights. But it hasn’t stopped there. Dip into social media with an opinion on cars, public transport, or cycling, and you’d better be prepared for some serious abuse back.

    The Uxbridge by-election brought this to the surface. It was a single-issue vote about Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand his Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – and the result showed that people in outer London really don’t like it.

    But make the case for cars in outer London – or anywhere else for that matter – and people will accuse you of wanting to kill children. Suggest that cycling doesn’t work for everyone, or argue that public transport can’t reach everywhere in the country, and you will be told you are a selfish planet-destroyer who would concrete over our national parks given half a chance. [† There will much concreting-over of all kinds of parks if the invasion continues. These creeps are unlikely to speak out against that.]

    ULEZ may not be a net zero measure as such, but it is certainly part of what I call the Net Zero Mentality. That’s the belief that it’s a serious possibility in a modern society for us all to live in the kind of place you find in the cuter children’s TV programmes, Camberwick Green or Balamory, where there is no traffic, no industry, and everything is available close by.

    This vision, whether its proponents admit it or not, underlies the “15-minute city” view of the world. In fact, it’s another of those prelapsarian fantasies that cultists have had as long as Western society has existed: the return to the lost Eden, living sustainably in harmony with nature.

    Those around the world who actually have to live such a life generally want to get out of it [see above †]. But here in Britain, too many of its fanatical proponents are coming to power – for a time. Mainly they are Green, Liberal Democrat, or Labour, but there are some in the Conservative party, too.

    They get voted in because their plans sound warm and cuddly – but voters then tend to revolt against the specifics. That’s what happened in Uxbridge. That’s what happened in Brighton: even Labour seemed preferable to four more years of deranged Green policy-making. And it even happened to the so-called Conservative council in Canterbury.

    There’s a reason for this. It’s that the normal needs of modern existence can’t be made to fit with utopian schemes for how we should get around. That’s why about 85 per cent of journeys in this country are made by car. The only way that figure is going to change is if governments curb car use by law – as they are increasingly trying to do.

    Public transport just can’t fill the gap. It’s good mainly at two things: moving people to and from the centre in highly dense urban areas like London, and serving the limited market for point to point, city centre to city centre, travel. Almost everywhere else, the fixed paths of trams, trains and tubes can’t cope with the different patterns of travel for work, for schools, for families.

    In short, they generally don’t go where people want to go. Even when they do, they don’t do so all the time; taking young children, pushchairs, or bags is cumbersome on trains and buses; and for many people there is a real safety concern.

    That is not going to change, because public transport is cripplingly expensive. Just running the railways cost £13 billion in subsidy last year – nearly £500 per household, paid by everyone whether you get on a train or not. HS2 has so far cost £20 billion and given us nothing at all.

    And look at the costs of expanding public transport in London. The Jubilee Line extension cost £3.5 billion – more than £6 billion in today’s money – and that bought half a tube line, ten miles long. Crossrail cost in excess of £18 billion, to a large extent running on existing lines. [73 route miles, of which about 13 is new tunnelling.]

    Outer London is four times as big as Inner. Just imagine the cost of a genuine new network that could get people out of cars. And then the fares. And then ask yourself where we would get all the extra train and bus drivers from. Then multiply this around our other cities and you begin to see that the problem is insurmountable.

    What about cycling, the other supposed panacea solution? Yes, it’s a bit more flexible, or can be. But for families or anyone carrying anything much, it’s even more difficult than public transport. It’s no fun in the rain or the dark. And it’s at least ten times as dangerous as getting in a car (the situation is similar in cycling paradises like the Netherlands).

    Studies have shown that the countries where most people cycle are small and wealthy – Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria. Cycling doesn’t make them rich – they do it because they are already rich. It’s not a substitute for normal methods of transport, it’s an add-on.

    Apart from Denmark, all have higher car ownership than the UK. Apart from Norway, most of which is uninhabited, they all have more than twice as much motorway per square mile than Britain (the Netherlands has four times as much).

    In the West, cycling is a luxury good for a small minority, the rich or people without commitments, the same kind of thing as food fads, farmers’ markets, or buying your carbon offsets for the summer holiday in Tuscany. It’s never going to be a serious way of moving people around – unless governments make all the alternatives too difficult.

    There is no point in kidding ourselves. In most circumstances, when people can use cars, they choose to do so. If we want people to use alternatives, the country has to get a lot richer. That means growing the economy and it means reducing tax and spend, not boosting it further. Vast new spending on public transport or cycle lanes is fashionable displacement activity, not serious policy.

    There is of course one last thing cars provide. They give you freedom. Once you have a car, you can go where you want, when you want. You aren’t limited to where and when the government, City Hall, or your local council, want you to travel.

    Even people in inner London sometimes want to go somewhere where TfL won’t take them. There will never be a substitute for this – and governments that value a free society shouldn’t try to force one on a free people.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/03/eco-cultist-war-on-car-is-built-on-fantasy-and-delusion/

  62. Niger; the plot thickens…
    Europeans will NOT have cheap energy!

    “Sprinter
    @Sprinter99800
    Another reason for the start of the war in Niger: the country planned to create a large gas hub to the European Union

    According to the plan of the European colonialists, Niger was to become part of the new Trans Saharan Gas Pipeline in exchange for Russian raw materials.
    The total volume of the project is 30 billion m³ of gas per year with an authorized capital of one billion euros.

    It becomes clear why there is such panic in the West over the loss of Niamey.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a78519533dfcde8e08498a9a86e9739a77b35239300ff635d9a35ea06c3f047d.jpg

    2. If the population of Nigeria are called Nigerians, are the inhabitants of Niger called Nigers?

      1. Sorry to disappoint you, Grizz, but the demonym for the people of Niger is – and thank the French for this – Nigeriens.

        1. And I wonder how many people incorrectly pronounce Niger as “Ny-jer” instead of the correct Francophone “Nee-zhaire“.

    3. The energy content of a given volume of gas depends on its pressure, temperature and purity. “Cubic metres” means nothing. Give me therms, or kWh at least.

  63. A wee Birdie Three today.

    Wordle 776 3/6
    🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par four for me.

      Wordle 776 4/6

      🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Oof, one letter away from an albatross
      Wordle 776 2/6

      🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      2. Are all five letters of the solutions always different?
        eg error might be difficult to hit.

    4. Par here.
      Wordle 776 4/6

      🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
      🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  64. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dae8c4c3baf213a502cb2488f56cbff89b2caebf95108d8657b751dffda7852c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e8aba4208cabfc8d2f007f881b63918a3cb02298c4b41fea2f131e03504aa17.jpg Time to get up close and serious, again, with a seasoned bowl of fatty pork belly mince and some tomato passata.

    A decent afternoon’s work has produced 2 kg (42 links) of Midlands’ pork-and-tomato sausage. No nitrites, nitrates nor preservatives used. They are now all bagged up in twos, threes and fours and sitting nicely in the freezer.

      1. One large chest freezer in the workshop and a large tall standard freezer in the kitchen. Those bagged sausages fit comfortably in a medium-sized lidded box measuring 12″ x 8″ x 6½” deep. I have six such (stacked) boxes, in the bottom of the chest freezer, all containing different produce.

          1. I am currently eating just four meals a week; those meals (on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) are mainly of meat (since my diet is 80% carnivorous). I alternate eating those sausages with bacon, beef steaks, chicken, pork, duck and lamb, all in various guises and recipes, and all served with just a few vegetables (not root vegetables). I eat no sugar or carbohydrates and I am now a strict teetotaller.

            This strict régime doesn’t make me miserable; why should it, I am eating and enjoying the type of food that I love. I sleep an uninterrupted 8 hours a night.

            I won’t eat all those sausages since friends come around, when they know I’ve been busy, and cadge a few from me.

            I have just recorded my 13th consecutive week of weight loss and I feel physically fitter and mentally sharper by the day. Two 30-minute sessions on the exercise bike a day helps.

          2. “strict teetotaller” – Gosh – how dull!

            Life’s too effing short, matey.

            Presumably your good lady eats tons of the food you don’t eat? I bet she doesn’t have a four day week.

          3. She eats four meals a day, but she is as thin as a whippet, as are all her family. I’m not missing alcohol at all and the aim is to have a long life in good health. I’ve never been a boozer so cutting back was easy.

          4. Yet you have told us of your appreciation for artisanal brewed ales. Although I understand the reasons for changing your priorities, I confess to being surprised that you have no residual yearning for the finest British brews.

          5. Indeed, Stig, and I shall still sample some on any future trip to the UK. As it stands, I have not had regular access to such sublime brews for 12 years now. I gave up drinking wine eight years ago and imported bottled beer three years ago. It was only in April this year that I had my last glass of single malt. Despite liking such things and being partial to may things containing sugar (ice-cream, cakes, etc) my determination to adopt a more natural lifestyle to combat future disease has taken priority. I find that I am not missing those thigs as much as I thought I would.

          6. I have to ask, Grizz, whether the lifestyle you have adopted was prompted by a particular health scare or was it a gradual realisation that a radical change to the way you were living was an essential prerequisite for leading both a longer and happier life.

          8. It sounds to me as a bizarre and miserable obsession, Griz.

            Perhaps you should ‘take a break’?

          9. Good sausage is hard to find this side of the North Sea, unless you make your own. SWMBO and Firstborn do, but typically only at Christmastime.

          10. Nowt miserable about losing weight, gaining better health, and getting happier while doing it. Why should I take a break from that?
            We evolved as hunter/gatherers and were much fitter and disease-free before agriculture came along.

  65. Council’s green cafe scraps vegetarian menu after diners demand meat options

    Bournemouth eco-hub, dubbed a ‘vanity project’, forced to revise menu after locals say beach location should cater for the masses

    By Telegraph Reporters • 4th August 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d080f70dd075e0892dac9aa0d9103c65f9daa2a8bb95941b836cd4e753a9c77f.jpg
    A council’s vegetarian café will now serve meat pasties and sausage rolls after complaints from customers.

    The £2.4 million Environmental Innovation Hub at Durley Chine on Bournemouth seafront was built out of recycled materials collected from the sea to highlight plastic pollution. In keeping with its green message, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council (BCP) imposed a vegetarian-only menu for the food kiosk at the hub.

    It sold vegetarian sausage rolls, steak-less pasties and vegan cakes among other ethical eats. But following feedback from customers, the council has revised the menu to include meat.

    A BCP spokesman said: “When we launched in February 2023, the catering manager made some well-considered menu decisions based on data and trends. We served milk-based ice cream, homemade vegan cakes and a selection of vegan pasties. The biggest request on the comment cards for the first three months was for a meat option.

    “At this flagship kiosk we pilot different ranges to find what customers prefer with both food and drink on offer and sustainable options, and the offerings for both will continue to evolve in line with customer feedback. The emphasis on being an environmental building comes from our desire to reduce waste, specifically, rather than as a reflection of our menu.” [A climbdown sticking in his throat like a chunk of non-vegan pastry.]

    The eco-hub has previously been branded a “council vanity project”. To make way for it a row of beach huts had to be removed, a move that angered the hut owners who were given nowhere else to go. Members of the public said it is only right the council offers both meat and vegetarian options.

    Dave Smith said: “If there was a café serving meat-only options there would be an outcry. It’s a beach café catering for a lot of different people. In a beach location, cater for the masses.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/04/vegetarian-cafe-at-councils-eco-hub-will-now-serve-meat/

    £2.4 million for a shabby wooden shack with lumps of turf on the roof?

    1. Folk continually forget that ocean plastic is a direct result of EU policy. The Eu forbids us from producing a certain amount of waste. Thus we pack all the waste we’re ‘not allowed’ to produce into shipping containers, send it off to Africa and India who print off a nice fancy certificate and promptly dump it all in the sea.

      We’re cleaning up our own waste because the EU says we can’t produce it, but we do. Comically, we used to use – and re-use – glass bottles but the eu stopped that. You could say that the waste is caused entirely by the EU.

      Hilariously, because of eu energy policy we are prevented from recycling our own plastic waste – it’s hugely energy intensive and with our energy bills it’s not cost effective – so we fill the oceans up on the pretence of green.

      2. When I went to the Uxbridge bunker, there was a rather nice-looking chocolate cake in the cafe and I decided I’d have a slice. “It’s vegan,” the woman behind the counter told me. “I won’t hold that against it,” I replied. In fact, it tasted surprisingly good.

        1. Some do – chocolate cake seems to translate into vegan very well. Others are not so good. Since ‘the jab’, our younger son has sadly become dairy intolerant and all cakes have to be dairy free.

  66. Greenpeace have shown their true colours

    A politician’s private life is not fair game. This childish, smug, antisocial stunt has set a dangerous precedent

    BRENDAN O’NEILL • 4th August 2023

    However mad politicians make me feel, it has never crossed my mind to go to their homes and shout at them. Consider all those Remoaner MPs who devoted their waking hours attempting to thwart mine and 17m other people’s votes for Brexit. Their anti-“gammon” elitism irritated the hell out of me. But I would never have dreamt of turning up on their doorsteps to wag a finger in their anti-democratic faces.

    Or how about when Keir Starmer says something idiotic, as seems to be his wont. Consider, for instance, when he claimed that 99.9 per cent of women don’t have penises – which suggests he thinks 1 in 1,000 women do have penises. Was this not anti-scientific drivel? Yet, even then, the thought of rocking up to Sir Keir’s home with a placard stating biological facts was the last thing on my mind.

    Which is why Greenpeace’s latest stunt has left me cold. The eco-warriors have descended, not on parliament, not on the HQ of some big business they loathe, but on the private residence of Rishi Sunak.

    Greenpeace scaling the roof of the PM’s constituency home in Kirby Sigston in North Yorkshire was like a home invasion, but dressed up in thin political finery. From that dizzy height, with a smug look on their faces, they unfurled a huge black sheet that covered the house, topped off with a yellow banner saying: “No more oil.” In doing so, they were registering their disdain for the Prime Minister’s plan to issue new oil and gas licenses for the North Sea.

    Imagine agitating against the creation of more energy during an energy crisis. People up and down the country are fretting over how to keep the lights on, and plummy greens are raging against energy exploration. It is a testament to the aloofness of bourgeois eco-agitators that they breezily virtue-signal against energy production at a time when ordinary people are crying out for more energy.

    But the problem with yesterday’s home-invading stunt was not only the pre-modern prejudices of posh greens – it was also their tearing apart of the sacred line between public and private. Greenpeace essentially turned the Sunak household into a political spectacle. They stormed the home of a young family – Sunak and his wife are in their early 40s, their daughters are just 12 and 10 – and made it a soapbox for their own narcissistic eco-preening.

    The Sunaks are on holiday in California, and Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace, has said the protest would not have gone ahead had the prime minister been at home. But his two young daughters in particular must feel alarmed by the prospect of people trespassing onto their private property and placing dark drapes over the windows.

    The move was uncaring, but such erasures of the line between politicians’ public activity and their private lives are becoming more common. When the US Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v Wade, pro-choice campaigners turned up outside the homes of conservative justices. In 2021, Welsh anti-lockdown protesters showed up outside the Cardiff residence of Wales’ First Minister, Mark Drakeford.

    And who can forget when “Class War” activists gathered at Jacob Rees-Mogg’s home a few years ago. One of them told one of Rees-Mogg’s kids: “Your daddy is a horrible person.” From aspiring to overthrow capitalism to father-shaming a Tory MP on his doorstep – how Marxism has fallen.

    The crazy fad for protesting at family homes speaks to a severe hollowing-out of politics. It seems to have been reduced from a question of the public good to a mere matter of personal feeling. Political life once consisted of rational clashes over policy. Now, increasingly, it is mostly explosions of emotionalist angst towards “evil” individuals, be they conservatives, businessmen or TERFs.

    When the personal becomes political, both personal life and political life suffer. A dangerous precedent has been set by Greenpeace’s vain, antisocial stunt – but a politician’s private life is not fair game for eco-fury. We mustn’t let this stand. Restoring the barrier between private life and public life is an essential task of our times.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/04/greenpeace-have-shown-their-true-colours/

    1. I wish we could separate our lives from the turmoil the politicians are wreaking on our homes.

    2. Ahem

      Nicked comment

      Martin
      Robinson, the Mail Online hack, was asking readers for help identifying
      the eco-loons who somehow managed to climb onto the roof of Sunak’s
      gaff on ladders at 6am in the morning, so I mailed him to explain what
      he almost certainly already knows.

      You are a journalist for the British media so you will kind of know the answer to your own question.

      The
      first point to make is that it is inconceivable that anyone could have
      pulled this off without the intelligence services and the police having
      prior knowledge and frankly, my own conclusion is that these eco-zealots
      are state sponsored. They are too well trained and obviously being well
      funded to carry out their stunts. Any UK PM’s residence will be among
      the most heavily surveilled and guarded properties in the country, so
      the idea that these goons climbed onto the roof of Sunak’s pile on
      ladders at 6am in the morning is absolutely preposterous and you know
      it. The police forces are obviously under orders to treat the disruption
      these people are causing with little or no intervention.

      For the
      record, the eco-loons who are disrupting our daily lives are paid state
      operatives. They are most likely trained by the intelligence services
      and by the Behavioural Insights Team (Nudge Unit). They will be getting
      paid handsomely for their time, probably through some untraceable
      offshore bank account. They will all have signed the Official Secrets
      Act to prevent them from disclosing who trained them and who is paying
      them.

      We are being gaslighted by our own political establishment
      to accept the insane policies of the powerful international forces who
      control our politicians, to accept drastic cuts to our living standards
      and our hard won freedoms. We have already lost our nation and our
      future to these unelected technocrats and corporatists.

      You will
      be fully aware of all of this, but of course, our media is also
      controlled very heavily. We do not have real journalism in the UK, the
      USA, the EU, Canada, Australia or NZ. The editorial content of all our
      mainstream media, across the developed world, is completely controlled.

      I
      still have a daily glance at Mail online, just to chuckle to myself at
      how badly we are deceived on daily basis by the British media. It’s
      pitiful garbage, but entertaining for someone like myself with my
      gallows humour and my resolute determination never to believe anything I
      am told by politicians or the media

      Regards
      It’s all Green Kabuki theatre

    3. They are certainly not ‘eco-warriors’!

      At best, they are wealthy, economically illiterate and profoundly ignorant of ecological matters.

      1. Doesn’t quite trip off the tongue so easily. The writer wouldn’t get away with ‘eco-twat’.

      2. Perhaps standing orders for security forces guarding senior government figures in their homes – against potential assassins – should be ‘Shoot to kill’.

    4. Perhaps we should all rock up to the houses of Areeba Hamid and Will McCallum, joint executive directors, with banners proclaiming, “No Net Zero”

    5. I’ll do you a deal: MPs will respect my opinion and enact my will. They will not set about globalist policy, interventionist economic policy and they will respect my right to freedom from them in all things, especially by, at every turn, cutting taxes, not fiddling with pensions, not setting out to borrow trillions for their own agrandisement.

      They will, basically, leave me alone. I shall return the favour.

    6. The fanatics have form; Nigel Farage and his family were targeted, as was Tommy Robinson.

      1. I always thought his catch phrase in the actual show was “What a shame, what a pity, never mind..”

      1. Oh blimey wibbling! That made me cry! My darling Mum’s favourite! And not just the sherry!

        1. When I was little we lived in a bit house – it’s now a hotel. Dad inherited the houseleeper and valet who had a suite of their own as ‘tenants’.

          They were a lovely couple and love On The Up as well. My abiding memory was more the Shining than some glorious mansion!

  68. ‘Night All

    Very belated medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94bbf6c679ac3e52133bef2385f7e7a47b8a0adfcc2ec0fc2717a0b5ffe17bd0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c469e27de3e20d084c81313a3801504e878f3bb209de9f741062b1715262a86c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/073ad2ae9fc139761f0ef7e48299ba9c750c0329b45954ac52774e3ae82d6cfa.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3774d495b215ecc4c4cdf80365e926f6a94b5f1b573ae113856113ecf9b31831.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40d679438e1d8d0b969ee3b8138e62d466943618b7cdd4ad779a15d2c0e2740d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30dddac3e29277a6e85672ce9475b0d2670529f6428417b5f3e4994af9f95fce.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6424caff2dfa7f5d196bda00294ed8cdf2f91ce97a744e6e80f5dcee6be1b2e.jpg

    1. The IQ graph is usually denounced as a demonstration of the inherent racism of IQ tests themselves as the questions are framed – whether deliberately or inadvertently by the white people who set them – to the disadvantage of black people. When asked how the tests’ detractor know this, they say that the graphs would be identical if the tests were not racist.

      1. Ah but….
        Why do certain non white groups do even better than whites, using the same tests?

          5. And speciest I guess. Koko the gorilla took what was presumably a standard IQ test, given that she understood English and could communicate via signing. She scored 90.

  69. That’s me gone. Funny old day. Rain at start then sort of sunny. Bonfire has finally burned itself out. Very satisfying.

    Tomorrow looks like 100% rain. Loaf to make and domestic duties. Sunday – an outdoor Essex birthday party. Wish me luck….

    I’ll look in but not much until Monday.

    A bientôt

    1. If you read The Real Anthony Fauci, it is all laid out. They have played this trick numerous times.

  72. Corporal Frank Lester VC (18th February 1896 – 12th October 1918), 10th Battalion, The Lancashire Fusiliers

    For most conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice during the clearing of the village of Neuvilly, on 12th October, 1918, when, with a party of about seven men under an officer, he was the first to enter a house from the back door, and shot 2 Germans as they attempted to get out by the front door. A minute later a fall of masonry blocked the door by which the party had entered. The only exit into the street was under fire at point-blank range. The street was also swept by fire of machine guns at close range. Observing that an enemy sniper was causing heavy casualties to a party in a house across the street, Corporal Lester exclaimed, ” I’ll settle him,” and, dashing out into the street, shot the sniper at close quarters, falling mortally wounded at the same instant. This gallant man well knew it was certain death to go into the street, and the party opposite was faced with the alternative of crossing the fire-swept street or staying where it was and being shot one by one. To save their lives he sacrificed his own.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/VCFrankLester.jpg

    1. There was a lot of fighting in the area at that time.
      My wife’s great uncle was killed close by, at the end of October.
      We visit the area frequently.

      1. Respect for the Uncle & Cpl Lester VC.
        “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
        John 15 v 13.

        1. When he died, Cpl Lester was as old as Second Son.
          That brings it home even more.

      1. Indeed John, although there was still plenty more dying to be done on both sides.

  73. My word bbc1 a programme about Snowden. In the summer. People being nicked for parking police all over the place litter pickers getting in the way. The staff Moaning about everything. Sheep avoiding human contact, can’t work that one out.
    Basically absolute panic and pandemonium. I’m surprised the Government aren’t insisting on Hi Vi’sj ackets and hard hats.
    I’m not sure how many times the narrative has included the word pandemic.

      1. ‘cos their Mother lives there?
        Pleasant place, Wales. Some great countryside, and great pubs in said countryside.

        1. OK! I know, but all my memories of Wales involve an inordinate amount of rain (1966) and some not awfully nice people! Sorry Herr Oberst!

          4. I really don’t mean to whinge about a whole country but I was quite young and it was very very wet!

          5. I spent the afternoon in Wales today and it was dry 🙂 Mind you, Anglesey (Ynys Mon) is VERY wet.

          6. First trip to the Principality was to Butlins, Pwhelli, in 1963. I was six, and unimpressed.

            More recently, I attended the funeral of an Uncle, in Rhosneigr. I didn’t see a Blue Plaque, saying that “Geoff Graham was conceived here”, but never mind. The family introduced me to the Pastor, translating the conversation between Welsh and English. Strange, then, that he conducted the service more or less equally in English and Welsh…

            If only the service had included the Welsh National Anthem, I’d have been ready:

            My hen laid a haddock,
            one hand oiled a flea,
            Glad farts and centurions threw dogs in the sea,
            I could stew a hare here and brandish Dan’s flan,
            Don’s ruddy bog’s blocked up with sand.
            Dad! Dad! Why don’t you oil Auntie Glad?
            Can’t whores appeaar in beer bottle pies?
            Oh butter the hens as they fly!

          7. Rhosneigr rings a bell – I’m sure I’ve played golf there – is it on Anglesey?

          2. Careful Geoff you might be arrested. And were would that leave us ? 😉🤔🤗

          3. It’s OK, Eddy. My TV is only connected to the interwebby thing. I don’t ‘do’ live broadcast TV, nor iPlayer. While the BBC frequently – erroneously – states that you must have a TV Licence merely if you own equipment capable of receiving TV transmissions, that is not what the law says.

            I restrict my viewing to streaming services. I might stretch a point and watch GB News ‘not quite live’, and the same applies to a recent Coronation, and Funeral for that matter, but neither were from the BBC…

      3. Had my parents not gone there on holiday in 1956, this site probably wouldn’t exist. As an only child, I assume they didn’t go back…

        1. Thank goodness they did, Geoff! What on earth would we all be doing without you?

          6. I’ll have you know I spent 4 hours weeding the Herbaceous borders (as they are known in Norfolk) earlier today as well as repointing the flaunching with very quick drying cement, where Squirrel Nutkin has hitherto visited our loft. Just in case he is still ‘at home’ I’ve left some tasty treats in some ‘arresting kit’…

          7. Good for you. I’ve more or less decided that I’ve banished Ratty from below the bird feeding station. A squirrel baffle has baffled the squirrel, as advertised. I’m preparing one border for three new rose bushes, which may not have survived being just left in their pots for two weeks, in frequent rain. Whatever – if they die, they die…

          9. I’ll have you know I spent 4 hours weeding the Herbaceous borders (as they are known in Norfolk) earlier today as well as repointing the flaunching with very quick drying cement, where Squirrel Nutkin has hitherto visited our loft. Just in case he is still ‘at home’ I’ve left some tasty treats in some ‘arresting kit’…

          10. I’ll have you know I spent 4 hours weeding the Herbaceous borders (as they are known in Norfolk) earlier today as well as repointing the flaunching with very quick drying cement, where Squirrel Nutkin has hitherto visited our loft. Just in case he is still ‘at home’ I’ve left some tasty treats in some ‘arresting kit’…

      4. 😉😊
        I’ve been a few times over the years. And because of covid three years ago our family holiday holiday in Cornwall had to be cancelled. Including our 6 month old grandson we were one over the government limit.
        So we went to Lydstep near Tenby it was lovely.

          1. I know that if I go to certain towns the only way I can do it is by going through Wales 🙂

      7. I towed the famiy caravan all across England to get to the Welsh coast overlooking Cardigan Bay.
        We looked out to sea and saw the porpoise of the holiday.

      8. Went there on holiday twice as a kid and quite enjoyed it. When we lived in Warrington in the 80s we went there for a run in the car quite a lot – I wouldn’t want to live there though – if you went in a pub or shop and spoke everyone started speaking in Welsh, one time we took a Welsh friend with us and when they did this he started talking in Welsh which shut the locals up

        1. That was the other joy of the place! My Dad and his pal experienced that sort of ‘Day of the Damned’ stuff!

        2. You’ll be delighted to know that a party from my school on a trip to Wales set up their Theodolites on a village green in mid Wales and when the locals asked what they were doing said: “Didn’t you know this is where the new dual carriageway is coming through!”

          1. I did a similar thing in Carlisle, when at the Technical College. “Have you not heard of the M6 Diversion?” “It’s coming right through here.”

            The ironic thing was that my parental (rented) home was blighted by plans for an Outer Ring Road, which never came to fruition. And the local Tory councillor assured us that we would be demolished. Of the four possible routes, the most sensible would entail demolition of his Mother’s home. But, we weren’t important…

        3. My Carlisle-born uncle lived in Anglesey for most of his adult life. To me, he sounded Welsh. To the locals, he sounded English. He could go into (say) the Post Office, where everyone was conversing loudly in English, and – as soon as he opened his mouth – the locals would switch to Welsh, and make disparaging comments about him. No matter – as he left, he would bid them a fond farewell. In fluent Welsh…

      9. We might want to go and see where mother in law was born. No seriously, we might but not likely.

        After seeing the weather during the Senior Open last week, I wouldn’t want to try golfing there.

        1. It is beautiful, but a lot of the locals don’t like the English. Can’t think why.

    2. Which programme?

      And you should know that you’re supposed to call it Yr Wyddfa. Snowdon is derived from Old English and is verboten in Welsh Wales.

  74. Been out and am totally exhausted. Going to try and watch Foxy then go to bed. I don’t know what’s worse- heart ache or face ache. Have dosed up on paracetamol so hopefully it will work.

    3. On the plus side you’ve managed to get out and about.

      I’m sure your OH is watching over you and delighted with your progress at this extremely difficult time.

    6. Be careful with paracetamol dosage, Ann; max 4 gm per diem:

      “Adults can take two, 500mg tablets, 4 times in 24 hours. You must wait at least 4 hours between doses. Do not take more than 8 tablets in 24 …”

      Otherwise, yer liver gets f**cked.

    8. There are non-opiod painkillers. The Warqueen had some after junior’s birth. I don’t remember the name but your doc needs to work harder to help you rather than the easy route of codeine. It could be a numbing injection every few weeks – make them work for you.

    9. One step at a time is all you can ask yourself to take.

      Memories are good for heart ache.

      1. Good point. When my father died 30 years ago my mother said she didn’t need photographs as she had memories which tell a bigger story than a photo.

  75. I’m off up to the village for the firework display, then a pint of two in the pub.
    Logging off now, G’night all.

  76. Evening, all. Been dry here and even some sunshine! Had a good time at the races (although I don’t bet, so didn’t win any money). Did have a share in a horse that ran at Goodwood and he got placed, so will have won a bit that way.

  78. BBC1’s 6pm news led, predictably, with the boiling seas and an interview with another expert uttering those immortal words “Something must be done.”

    Please, put a ****ing sock in it. It’s bloody relentless. Part of me wants a really cruel winter to expose the folly of energy policy but it’ll hurt the wrong people and we’ll still just get more of the same, with reason, science and logic twisted and turned inside out, back to front and upside down to demonstrate the need for more renewables and insulation and a ban on gas boilers or something else off the Little Orange List of eco-twattery.

    And you can be sure that if there is an unusually high number of deaths this winter as a result of cold weather, the BBC will report that it is ‘disproportionately’ high amongst the ethnic minorities, in the same way that Covid and the Grenfell fire were, well, also a bit racist.

    I think the weekend’s beer ration is going to take an early and disproportionate hit.

    1. Two possible outcomes from this relentless climate change propaganda:-
      1. Everyone gets frightened to death.
      2. Everyone gets so pissed off with the doom-laden attempted indoctrination that people refuse to believe climate ‘experts’.

      3. 3. A fairly large proportion (gullible people and youngsters already indoctrinated at school/uni) of the population will just lap it up.

    2. If this is true as these people relentlessly predict and they actually know everything. Why are they allowing thousands of illegal immigrants into our country and destroying our agricultural land and precious green belt land to accommodate them. This so obviously adds to the carbon emissions of the whole country.
      If they can’t and have as things stand, have never been able to explain what they are trying to achieve. They are the biggest prolific and repeatativly lying scum bag B*stards on the planet earth.

    3. I was prepared for the energy policy to kick in last winter. I’ve three or more fully charged lights, and the means to keep the router running for several hours. Having gas central heating, being dependent on a power supply to run it – plus an all-electric kitchen – I’ve taken precautions. In the short term, 5kg of Patio Gas will keep me out of trouble. The Barbie has a gas ring…

      1. I have lots of candlesticks/candelabra with the necessary candles, plus three oil lamps. For heating I have open fires as well as the solid fuel Rayburn (unfortunately, that needs electricity to run the pump if running hot baths regularly is to be avoided).

        2. Invest in a small generator like what I did – runs the CH, TV, computer, lights, fridge, freezer and kettle (I cook by propane gas). Also have the woodburner and tons of logs

          1. Yes, I’ve been thinking about acquiring a small genny – Honda do some good ones, I think. The problem is a) where to keep it and b) how to plumb it in, so to speak.

          2. The 240v output on mine goes into the ring main via an ordinary 3-pin plug when in use. The mains has to be isolated though to avoid electrocuting anyone working on the grid. Mine is a 2.8Kva which is adequate to keep things going.

  79. Three Avro Lancaster B Mark Is of No 44 Squadron, Royal Air Force based at Waddington, Lincolnshire, flying above the clouds. Left to right: W4125, `KM-W’, being flown by Sergeant Colin Watt, Royal Australian Air Force; W4162,`KM-Y’, flown by Pilot Officer T G Hackney, (later killed while serving with No 83 Squadron); and W4187, `KM-S’, flown by Pilot Officer J D V S Stephens DFM, who was killed with his crew two nights later during a raid on Wismar.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e091d739db990599a50491e4926005853ee73f322ad249efc49684eeabf9c34.jpg

    1. Next week I’m attending the 100th Birthday celebrations of the wife of a chap who was an RAF Navigator / Bomb aimer. She still has a copy of ‘Picture Post’ – the Front cover of which is a photograph of his plane dropping a stick of bombs.

    2. Brave pilots and crews. Lucky they didn’t know what the country they fought for was to become.

        1. They were fighting for their country, and that’s what they died believing. Bugger the elites and politicians.

    3. As a child the closest I ever came to one was making the Airfix model of the Lanc!

    4. Brilliant. My friend Dianne-The-Ex’s eldest was the Typhoon display pilot in the Typhoon / Spitfire 75th anniversary flights. I attended* his wedding at Cranwell, some years earlier. *For attended, read “played one of the RAF’s two organs”. A nice, well – maintained instrument by Rushworth and Dreaper. Sadly, five minutes before the bride arrived, someone pressed the button at the door to cue the organist. I have my suspicions…

  80. I ran my regular bath tonight – it was 0.5°C higher than usual.
    I blame it on global warming. 😉

      1. At the rate of polar melting it will have reached the overflow well before net zero.

  87. Good night, chums. I hope you all sleep well and awake refreshed. It’s been a busy but ultimately productive day for me, and I hope to see you all tomorrow.

  88. ChatGPT from OpenAI and the Chrome Browser extemsion

    ChatGPT is a ground breaking way of accessing knowledge on the internet by using a natural language interface extension to Googlr. I’ve been using ChatGPT back ended apps to dabble around AI and find out what really happens when you interaxt with a language interface to the most poweful way of learning yet from the information on the internet.

    You can get one step ahead of me by trying the fast track route to the internet by installing this extension:

    https://youtu.be/aGge8JGU3Tk

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